Saturday, July 06, 2013

Oh they love 'em some juntas

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

6 comments:

A midwife who took 17 years to do one delivery and stole at least $27 million from the patient would probably lose her license. Especially if she murdered a large number of people and ran a baby-stealing ring.

There's so much wrong with that, it hardly bears consideration, except to say that ever since 1973, the capitalists have been trying--mostly unsucessfully--to rewrite the history of Chile.

The "transition to democracy" part is, of course, the most egregrious and the biggest distortion. Allende was elected by popular vote, even though it was close, while Pinochet abrogated Chilean democracy by means of military coup. More importantly, Chile had some form of democracy (although with long periods of autocratic presidents and a parliament focused on the needs of the wealthy) since its independence from Spain in 1810.

Not to mention that the free-marketeer Chicago boys surrounding Pinochet essentially did what the Chicago boys do--larded up the government with debt, diverted government funds to their own commercial interests, privatized the public pension system, which ended up impoverishing it, and generally wrecked the country. The Chicago Boys did, however, achieve their true goal--making themselves and the rich much, much richer. That it was done via torture and imprisonment only makes its utility as an economic model ever more suspect.

What the WSJ ed board believes should never count for much, because it's always a bushel basket of lies and distortions.

Neocons' concept of "freedom" always seems to involve massive oppression -- basically authoritarianism to make sure the little people don't get in the way of the elites' freedom of action and maximization of gain.